Gemini Foundation, the derivatives exchange founded by billionaire entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is set to host its first trading competition next month. The international crypto derivatives exchange, which was launched in May by the Winklevoss-owned American crypto exchange, is hoping to leverage the trading competition to lure new users to the platform.

The Winklevoss twins plan to launch the Gemini Leaderboard competition on August 1, 2023, Bloomberg reported earlier today. The leaderboard will track the performance of crypto traders on the international derivatives trading platform and reward the top-performing traders accordingly.

The Gemini Foundation will host multiple competitions, each with unique rules, objectives, and duration. The best traders will be rewarded as much as 250 GUSD every day. The competition will not be available for users in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

Traders who are interested in participating in the competition will have to fund their derivatives account with at least 250 GUSD before the end of the month. This amount would have to be maintained in the account throughout the duration of the competition. The first competition will end on August 31, 2023.

The promotional event comes amid Geminis declining trading volume. Data from CoinGecko showed that the crypto exchanges trading volume declined by more than 87% over the past year, going from $147 million to almost $18 million at the time of writing. As per the exchanges self-reported proof of reserves, it currently holds $6.4 billion worth of crypto.

When regulators in the United States cracked down on the crypto industry, the Winklevoss twins looked offshore to set up a derivatives platform and increase their crypto firms global presence, which led to the establishment of the Gemini Foundation. The GUSD stablecoin serves as the derivatives exchanges primary token, and perpetual contracts offered on the trading platform are denominated in GUSD.

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Winklevoss-Owned Gemini To Launch Trading Competition To Attract Users - Ethereum World News

Fidelity Digital Assets released a Q2 2023 Signals Report on July 18, which claimed that Ethersoutlook for the next 12 months and the long term is positive. Year-to-date, Ether (ETH)has gained 62%, but while the investment firm might be short-term bullish on Ether, that does not mean it believes that the month-long bullish channel will be sustained.

While institutional investors like Fidelity Digital Assets may have a bullish longer-term vision for ETH's price, lets compare their analysis against network and market data to see if theyre on the money.

Beyond the technical indicators, the rationale behind Fidelitys bullish outlook for Ether is the networks higher burn rate versus coin issuance, the new address momentum and a growth in the number of network validators.

According to the Fidelity report, the net issuance since the Merge in September 2022 resulted in a net supply decrease of more than 700,000 Ether. Additionally, the analysts claim that Glassnode data showing an increasing number of Ethereum addresses that transacted for the first time ever proves healthy network adoption.

The report also points to a 15% increase in the number of active Ethereum validators in the second quarter.

The expectation around EIP-1153 is also building momentum for the Ethereum network, as the transient storage opcode improves smart contract efficiency, reduces costs and amplifies the Ethereum Virtual Machine design. The change is especially meaningful for decentralized exchanges (DEXs), where Ethereums dominance declined to 46% from 60% six months prior, according to DefiLlama data.

Another potentially bullish factor for the Ethereum network is the anticipated upgrade on the leading DEX, Uniswap. According to a July 17 presentation at the Ethereum Community Conference, the upcoming Uniswap v4 will allow users to build unlimited types of pools using programmable buttons (hooks), native ETH support and a singleton contract that performs internal transactions before settling final balances.

The announcement fueled the likelihood that EIP-1153 will be included in the next Dencun upgrade, which triggered Slingshot and DeFi Pulse co-founder Scott Lewis.

If approved, the implementation will be vital for the Ethereum network to recoup the market share lost due to high gas fees, as the seven-day average transaction cost has been above $4 since February. Consequently, Ethereums total value locked has dropped to its lowest level since April 2020, at 13.55 million ETH, according to DefiLlama.

Moreover, decentralized application activity has dwindled, as shown by DappRadars unique active wallets 30-day data: Uniswap, minus 28%; 1inch Network, minus 14%; MetaMask Swap, minus 8%; and OpenSea, minus 5%. As a comparison, in the same period, BNB Smart Chains PancakeSwap gained 10%, and Polygons Uniswap users increased 8%.

Ether quarterly futures have been signaling unease among professional traders. Those fixed-month contracts typically trade at a 5% to 10% premium compared to spot markets to compensate for the delayed settlement, a situation known as contango.

According to data from Laevitas, the Ether three-month futures premium currently stands at 4%, which is below the neutral threshold and lower than the 5.5% level seen on July 14. This indicator is clear evidence that traders are less inclined to use leverage for bullish ETH positions.

More concerningly, Ethers 59% gains year-to-date might have caused investors to become overly optimistic. A recent survey from CryptoVantage of 1,000 North Americans that invested in cryptocurrencies over the past five years found that 46% named Ether as the top contender to surpass Bitcoin (BTC).

Related:Bitcoin rally will lead to "speculative blow-off top in 2024, Mark Yusko predicts

This is a somewhat startling point of view, but it could be misleading since the survey did not ask whether any coin would eventually flip Bitcoin, so respondents dont necessarily place strong odds on this outcome.

Fidelitys analysis has given valid reasons for why the firm is bullish on Ethers 12-month price performance, but in the shorter term, the recurrent high gas fees and lack of interest from leverage buyers signal increased odds of the Ether price breaking below the channel support.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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Crypto survey finds 47% of investors expect Ethereum to 'surpass' Bitcoin - Cointelegraph

CLabs, the organization responsible for developing the Celo blockchain, is seeking to return to the Ethereum ecosystem by transitioning from an independent EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain to an Ethereum layer-2 solution.

According to a proposal discussion on Celos governance forum, the transition would include leveraging OP Stack as the architecture to become an Ethereum L2 blockchain, eliminating the need to monitor tooling and libraries composability through upgrades, thus making it easy for Celo developers to utilize the full gambit of Ethereum tooling/libraries.

Other key differentiating factors would include an off-chain data availability layer operated by Ethereum node operators and protected by restaked Ether (ETH), along with transforming current validators into decentralized sequencers for L2.

Layer-1 and Layer-2 blockchains differ primarily in purpose, but also in their design and architecture. While L1 networks are designed to be self-sufficient, L2 solutions are aimed at enhancing the performance of L1 blockchains rather than operating independently.

Benefits from the transition were said to include increased security while maintaining low gas fees. We expect no material change of gas fees. As the proposal is for an L2 solution with off-chain data availability, gas costs can be a lot lower than on other L2s, reads the proposal, scheduled to be discussed on a governance call on July 21 before being released for a temperature check on the following day.

By adopting the proposal, end-users would not be affected by the migration, and CELO tokenholders would retain control over core contracts by voting on governance proposals. Additionally, CELO tokens will also be used to pay for gas.

Although the transition seems purely technical, it may affect the Celo ecosystem in different ways. As per the forum discussion, it could potentially enable more liquidity to flow between Celo and other chains but also generate extra costs for sequencers, such as fees on the data availability layer and gas on Ethereum. In addition, it is also unclear whether sequencers' rewards would match with current validators rewards.

With blockchains becoming increasingly competitive, Celohas been working on improving its mobile experience by incorporating increased functionality and particular features. The Celo ecosystem is also targeting developing economies, where more technological solutions for payments are in demand.

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.

Magazine: Heres how Ethereums ZK-rollups can become interoperable

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Celo blockchain proposes return to Ethereum ecosystem, transition to L2 - Cointelegraph

Ethereum Developer Conference Ethcon Korea 2023: What to Expect

Ethcon Korea 2023 is the premier Ethereum developer conference in South Korea, sponsored by the Ethereum Foundation. It will take place from September 1 to September 3, 2023, at Platz2 (2) in Seoul, a cozy and spacious co-working space in the heart of the city.

The event will feature a keynote speech by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, who will share the latest updates and future plans for the Ethereum project. It will also showcase presentations by developers from around the world, who will share their innovative research and projects in the Ethereum and Web3 space.

Ethcon Korea 2023 is a non-commercial, volunteer-driven event, supported by the Ethereum Foundation to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration among the developer community. It is the largest developer event in Korea, attracting talent from both local and global scenes.

The event will also host a three-day hackathon, where developers can work on new ideas and projects, and present them at a live-streamed demo day. The hackathon will use Quadratic Funding, a democratic funding and evaluation method for public goods, proposed by Vitalik and implemented by Gitcoin. Quadratic Funding combines votes from judges, sponsors, and attendees to allocate resources based on their contribution and support.

Ethcon Korea 2023 is open for submissions for proposals and talks until July 18. The event aims to include a diverse range of active researchers and developers, with the main goal of learning from each other and advancing the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ethcon Korea 2023 is part of the Korea Blockchain Week 2023, a Web3 conference organized by FactBlock and Hashed, which will run from September 4 to September 10.

Ethcon Korea is an annual developer-focused conference and hackathon held in Seoul, South Korea. It is the largest developer event in the country, dedicated to Ethereum and Web3 development. For more information, please visit the official website at https://ethcon.kr/.

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Ethcon Korea 2023: Ethereum Foundation's Dev Event to Feature ... - FinanceFeeds

The headlines in crypto for the last year have been all about fraud, regulatory crackdowns, and the general dysfunction of the industry. This makes it easy to overlook the fact that blockchain technology is moving forward and that, even amid all the scandals, crypto is getting better and easier to use.

I was reminded of this recently when I spoke to Henri Vis of Matter Labs, an outfit thats raised around $460 million to develop a complement to the Ethereum blockchain that makes transactions faster and cheaper by using so-called zero-knowledge technology. The specifics are complicated, but the basic idea is that Matter Labs takes batches of transactions and processes them in bulk before stamping a tamper-proof record on the main Ethereum blockchain.

This is not exactly new. Developers have been building these sorts of layer-2s for years, and two projects, Arbitrum and Optimism, that use a rival method to zero knowledge are well-established in the crypto world and worth billions of dollars. Whats different now is that the layer-2 projects seem to be on the cusp of delivering on their promise. According to Vis, Matter Labs techknown as zkSyncmakes transactions around 80% cheaper, and theyre poised to get much cheaper than that.

Just as important, Vis says the layer-2 projects are making big strides in fixing their godawful user experience, which typically involves having to buy something called wrapped Ethereum or another token and then jump through hoops to make it work. Refreshingly, Vis conceded the current experience is a nightmare andalong with the high costs of using the main Ethereum blockchainmake most people not want to have anything to do with crypto.

If hes right, then crypto newbies will be able to easily interact with blockchains without getting torched by sudden fees of $20 or more that have led many sensible people to throw up their hands and not return. Meanwhile, businesses of all stripesVis says every big tech, finance, and retail company has a team tinkering with blockchainare exploring ways to take advantage of Ethereums powerful ledger and smart contracts. Its not crazy to think that, two years from now, Ethereum will have a mainstream role in everything from payments to loyalty programs.

Weve heard such promises for years, of course, but something just feels different this time. The ends of previous Crypto Winters have seen the technology take a giant leap forward in terms of cost and ease of use, and this is likely to happen again. As for which layer-2s will prevail, Vis predicts the field will come to take on an Uber/Lyft dynamic with one company winning around 80% of the market share and one rival picking up most of the rest. Right now, relative newcomer zkSync ranks third, but its still early enough for things to shift dramatically.

I cant predict who will win or just when this new era of cheap, easy-to-use crypto will beginespecially as the industry has a habit of shooting itself in the foot. But the accelerating popularity of layer-2s, and their focus on making blockchain cheap and easy to use, suggests crypto is going in the right direction.

Jeff John Robertsjeff.roberts@fortune.com@jeffjohnroberts

Last weeks Ripple ruling could have a perverse effect as it appears to provide special protections to sophisticated crypto investors and not retail ones. (Bloomberg)

Binance laid off approximately 1,000 employees, primarily those in customer service roles. (Fortune)

The price of altcoins like Solana and Avalanche are way up after the Ripple ruling in what analysts described as a FOMO rally. (Bloomberg)

JPMorgan analysts described the Ripple ruling as a win for Coinbase, whose shares are up considerably. (The Block)

Defi lender Aave created a new stablecoin, GHO, which reached a $2.5 million market cap in two days. (Decrypt)

Zuckerberg just invited Twitters crypto-loving cofounder to Threads:

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Crypto is close to solving its biggest problem: Building something useful - Fortune